A few years ago, I came upon the headquarters of Earthbox Mexico hidden away on a quiet, shady street in Guadalajara’s Colonia Seattle.
Stepping through the door of Calle 4 #96, I found myself inside a beautiful garden filled with the most extraordinary collection of plants, from Echinacea flowers to stinging nettles, black tomatoes to cotton plants decorated with fluffy balls of white. What made the garden even more unusual was that almost everything was growing out of a plastic box.
Last week, I made my way back to Calle 4 and behind the same unassuming doorway I was delighted to see an even bigger garden with an even greater variety of plants just waiting to start a new life on your porch or balcony.
In a little office tucked away among all the greenery, I found Robert Patterson, who is responsible for the promotion of earthboxes all over the world.
Patterson worked for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization for more than 30 years, looking for ways to help women and children grow vegetables at home. “Perhaps the best solution we found was the earthbox,” he told me.
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